Several Friends meetings were founded in Pennsylvania in the early 1680s.[a] The Merion Friends Meeting House is the only surviving meeting house constructed before 1700.[3] Thirty-two surviving Pennsylvania meeting houses were constructed before 1800, and are listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) or as contributing properties in historic districts.[4] More than one hundred meeting houses constructed before 1900 were documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey, and published in Silent Witness: Quaker Meeting Houses in the Delaware Valley, 1695 to the Present (2002).[5] Those that were involved in the Underground Railroad have been identified by the Federal NETWORK TO FREEDOM program (NTF).
In 1827, the Great Separation divided Pennsylvania Quakers into two branches, Orthodox and Hicksite. Many individual meetings also separated, but one branch generally kept possession of the meeting house. The two branches reunited in the 1950s.
Built by carpenter John D. Smith using elements of the Greater Meeting House, 1813–1814; disassembled and relocated, summer 1972; rebuilt on campus of the George School, 1973–1974, Charles Hough, restoration architect;[14] rededicated September 24, 1974
A temporary, wood-frame building, built on Bank Hill, along the Delaware River.[20][e] Also used for meetings of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Provincial Council.[23]
West side of Front Street, between Race and Vine Streets, Philadelphia
A large two-story, three-bay brick building, 50ft (15m) square, with separate entrances for men and women.[24]:28 Built using salvaged materials from the demolished Centre Square Meeting House.[24]:27 Sold 1791.[21]
A two-story brick building, "76 feet front on Fourth street, 42 feet deep."[25] Built beside the Friends Public School (for boys). A school for girls occupied the meeting house's second floor.[25]
East side of Fourth Street, between Chestnut and Sansom Streets, Philadelphia
"The dimensions of the building were forty-seven by seventy-three feet."[29] Home of the Monthly Meeting for the Northern District until the 1827-28 Hicksite/Orthodox schism.[30]
Discontinued as a meeting, 1914. Reopened as Friends Neighborhood House, a settlement house serving immigrant communities.[30]
Southeast corner 4th and Green Streets, Philadelphia
Key's Alley Meeting House Home of the North Monthly Meeting, 1790–1816
1790
Dimensions: "68 by 50 feet, … an additional apartment of brick 40 by 45 feet on the north side of the building, for a Monthly Meeting room."[21]
Home of the North Meeting until 1816, when it moved to Green Street Meeting House.[21] The former meeting house became a Philadelphia public school.[21]
North side of New Street, between Front and 2nd Streets, Philadelphia
Built for Orthodox Friends who separated from the Hicksite Green Street Meeting House. "The dimensions of the building were 118 by 65 feet, with a height of 30 feet."[30]
Discontinued as a meeting, 1914. Sold 1918; became a community center and playground.[30]
Southwest corner 6th and Noble Streets, Philadelphia
Land donated by Samuel Powel.[31] "The meeting agrees that a brick house of 60 feet front, and 43 feet deep shall be built on said lot."[25] A two-story, three-bay brick building, with separate entrances for men and women.[24]:28 Robert Smith, builder
South side of Pine Street, between Front and 2nd Streets, Philadelphia
Charles II of England granted a charter to William Penn for the Pennsylvania Colony in 1681, in repayment of a large debt to Penn's late father. Penn, a Quaker, quickly drew up plans to divide the land within the colony, but in a way that encouraged settlement rather than real estate speculation. Initially, Pennsylvania was a predominantly, but not exclusively, Quaker colony, with Huguenots, Jews, and other persecuted religious minorities among the settlers. Penn was one of about sixty passengers who arrived at Philadelphia aboard The Welcome, in October 1682.[1] It is estimated that more than 2,000 European settlers arrived by ship in the first two years of the colony.[2]
"We are now laying the foundation of a new brick meeting-house in the Centre [Square] (sixty feet long and about forty feet broad), and hope to soon have it up, there being many hearts and hands at work that will do it." — Robert Turner to William Penn, August 3, 1685.[20]
"Friends were long accustomed to hold night meetings on the Sabbath. Their house on the Bank Hill, on Front Street, was at first called Evening Meeting because [it was] chiefly made for such a convenience when that at Centre Square was too far off."[22]
"[Construction of a] large meeting-house, fifty feet long and thirty-eight broad, also going on in the front of the river for an evening meeting." — Robert Turner to William Penn, August 3, 1685.[20]
The Evening Meeting House was located on the west side of Front Street, at or slightly north of the present crossing of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
The ministers' galleries from the Bank Meeting House survive at the Sadsbury Meeting House in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.[24]
"It was surmounted, in the centre of its four-angled roof, by a raised frame of glass-work so constructed as to let light down into the meeting below, after the manner of the former Burlington [New Jersey] meeting-house."[27]
A floor joist from the Greater Meeting House is initialed and dated: "AC + IC 1755," spelled out in nailheads.
